


The Courage to Press Down

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, But no one dies, Depression, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Suicidal Thoughts, this is not a happy story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:21:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23562973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: You put your life on the line enough times, you take enough bullets for someone else, you look death in the eye enough times, it gets to you on some level.
Kudos: 5
Collections: Anonymous





	The Courage to Press Down

**Author's Note:**

> “Tell me that you don’t take that blade and drag it across your skin and pray for the courage to press down.” --Susanna Kaysen, Girl Interrupted.
> 
> If you're experiencing suicidal thoughts, please, please, please talk to someone. The National Suicide Prevention Line is 1-800-273-8255.  
> Warnings for everything in the tags apply. Also, this fic has some fairly specific methods of suicide in it. None are followed through on but the thought/plan of them is there.
> 
> Hope you enjoy and I love comments!

You put your life on the line enough times, you take enough bullets for someone else, you look death in the eye enough times, it gets to you on some level.

Dean stopped caring about his own life as something beyond an abstract concept years before Sam left for Stanford. 

After that, only the threat of impending death could make him feel close to alive. 

Fighting for his life was the only time he felt like that life meant something.

Dean had access to guns, knives, rope, and all kinds of drugs. He could kill himself any time he wanted. He wouldn’t do it that way, though. He didn't want to be remembered as a coward, as weak, as broken.

If he was suicidal, Dean told himself, he’d just let some ghost crush his windpipe or something.

He didn’t want that, so he was fine.

On one of the bad nights, when he’d had a little too much to drink and he was missing Sammy, Dean gave in and looked up _suicidal thoughts_. 

At best, John would have laughed at him; at worst, he would have called Dean weak. But John was four states away, probably getting sloshed off bad whiskey, and Dean could tell himself he didn’t care.

Dean began clicking on links with shaking hands. He found that there were three levels of danger suicidal people could be evaluated by.

The first level was suicidal ideation, the second was planning out your suicide, and the third was getting ready for it.

Dean stared at the ceiling for hours that night, wondering if he was at the second level or not. It wasn’t like he was ever going to ask anyone. He hated shrinks and John would kill him if he found out. Dean’s dad already thought he was a failure; Dean didn’t need him to think he was attention-seeking, too.

It was what it was. Talking about his fucking feelings wouldn’t solve anything. It wouldn’t make him less weak. 

It would just make it real.

It was what it was.

It-- whatever ‘it’ was, because Dean refused to give it a name-- was better around Sam. Sam was his reason to live, always had been, and being around his brother made Dean feel a little less like the world was behind a pane of glass.

Dean didn’t even think about staying away from the crossroads. He was a walking dead man anyway.

Castiel didn’t seem to understand that the man he’d dragged out of Hell hadn’t been alive since long before the Hellhounds.

///

Dean thought about suicide, sometimes. When Sam was asleep and Cas and Jack were gone and his only companion was his whiskey, he turned his gun over in his hands and thought about it.

_I’m at level two_ , Dean reassured himself, over and over again. _Just level two._

Dean wanted to take some Advil and slit his wrists in a bathtub, but he had a job to do.

Dean didn’t really care what happened to him. He never really had.

But there was Sam to protect, and Cas to watch out for, and now Jack to worry about. 

Taking care of his family was his job, and he wasn’t going to stop.

Dean had a list of ways he could kill himself in the back of his mind. On bad days, it ran through his thoughts in a loop.

He had a written list in his bedside drawer, too, beneath his photos and his second-favorite handgun. There was one of him and Mary, one of him, Sam, and Cas from Bobby, and one of him and Jack.

When Dean took the list out of the drawer and unfolded it, he had to look at the photos first.

Every time, he refolded the list along the same creased lines and put it back.

Dean knew he never would go through with it; he would never do that to Sammy or to Cas or to Jack. 

He didn’t do it.

He didn’t stop thinking about it.

Dean knew he was maybe going to be okay when he ran across a good way to kill himself and didn’t write it down.

It wouldn’t help change how most nights he thought a little too hard and a little too long about a gun against his temple and oblivion.

But it was something. 


End file.
